Swedish kids cast stones at Romanian beggar

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Swedish police are looking into the reported group assault on a 59-year-old woman who was begging outside a shopping mall in suburban Stockholm when bottles came flying.

Ileana Stanescu was seated outside the Kista Galleria mall in northern Stockholm on Tuesday evening when up to 25 youths appeared. She told Sveriges Radio (SR) that they hit her at first, but then ran to pick up stones.

"They had spray cans too. Nobody helped, who was supposed to help me at eight nine o'clock at night?" Stanescu said.

A man did come to her rescue.

"They were between 20 to 25 people, the entire street was full of young people. They were throwing stones, cans, and bottles at the woman," Ahmed Amer told SR.

He said he tried to talk sense to the young teens but there were too many of them for him to get his message through.

In the end, a security guard helped get Stanescu to safety.

The police arrived too late to note down the alleged assault.

"We were there for a long time, more than an hour, but we didn't get any such details, other than that there had been some disorder," local police officer Jörgen Karlsson told the TT news agency.

He said that the woman had been taken to hospital but the police had not been informed why.

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Swedish volunteer Bienvenido Flores, who lobbies for the rights of EU migrants in Stockholm, helped Stanescu report the incident formally to the police. He said the gang of youths had harassed the group of fifty or so Romanians who beg for money in and around Kista.

"The woman who was subjected to the violence told me that the police shook hands with these kids, but they didn't help her," Bienvenido told local media. "She was expecting the police to arrest them or question them, but instead they shook hands as though they were best friends."